Firefox for Web Developers @webdevs.firefox.com · May 18 Chrome shipped an LLM Prompt API to the web platform. At Mozilla, we oppose this API. Here's why:
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My personal point of view on the Prompt API ->
Chrome is being used as a vehicle to assert Gemini as the default model. Dominant browser -> dominant LLM Imagine my surprise at an American corporation prioritising its own market position and profits over its users and humanity in general...
Anecdata, but I am strongly strongly strongly positive about this API. The interoperability and the ToS issues do not detract from the idea here at all. Those are browser implementation specifics/details that in no way detract from the massive potential this has for the web.
Something like an LLM should not be built in to the web for the simple reason that it’s unpredictable, not exactly controllable, and will randomly misbehave sometimes, among other reasons. It barely deserves to be called computation- But wait- … … Can’t the same things be said about Javascript?
Does the prompt API require user permission?
It is good to push back on this so openly. I feel like this sort of decision just happens and everyone is stuck with it forever
This is good and all, but do y'all sell that shirt? The kit is so cute!
I don't have _any_ uses for an LLM where I can't specify the model it will use. Not until the general standard for mini/on-device models is way better than the current bleeding edge.
@jakearchibald.com - "In Chrome when you create a LanguageModel it will either use the Google Cloud API or download a 4GB model to run locally". We don't use the Google Cloud API. If the model isn't available we will kick off a download, but the API just doesn't work without the modal locally.
I hope this will not end like the battle for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and Digital rights management (DRM) in the browser. 🤞
I'm very grateful for people pushing back. I used the API, have some strong ideas how to make great things with it, but the legal aspects of it are broken as-is
The story is true of every company: the moment you start having a big event around releases and features, is the moment that decisions start being made about crunching and pushing for not-fully-baked things to be included for that event.
you don't need to license Google's model, it's free and it's going to change - every model out there has a very limited life span; any LLM based app needs to be ready for different models the API itself may be half baked and definitely shouldn't be rushed through without consensus either way!
Instance number 46285 of the Chromium team rushing a half-baked API out the door, explicitly avoiding standardization processes because they know their crap isn't compatible with the idea of a free and open web.
Our full standards position: github.com/mozilla/stan...
seems like the system prompt is light-weight/basic and chrome exposes developer-level “system” prompts directly? i understand your concerns, but i am absolutely going to try this out.
i wonder if people are going to get as upset about google shoving this through the standards process as they got/still are about web components supposedly also shoved through by the googlers. guess we will have to wait 10 solid years to find out. as the vice president of web components, not a fan.